Deut. 3:22 says, You must not fear them (the nations that Israel was to remove), for the LORD your God Himself fights for you. This is the basic truth of “spiritual warfare” (as some call it). If God is for us, who can be against us (Rom. 8:31b).
Missions in the 1800s and early 1900s, in many
parts of Africa, Asia (esp. China), Central/South America and the islands of
the Pacific Ocean, God’s mighty work was seen.
It was not known for outbreaks of speaking in tongues or amazing works
by miracle workers. Rather it was known
for bold and courageous preaching of the gospel accompanied by hours and days
spent in prayer. Sometimes there were
seasons of seemingly no response.
Sometimes missionary children died, and missionaries themselves were
killed, all testing the faithfulness of the servants of God. But often, these times of labor were followed
by massive harvests of souls.
God’s work is always opposed, of course. The attacks come from outside as well as from
within (Ac. 20:29-30). The attacks from
within are generally some means of diverting the attention of God’s people from
His word! In the case of Israel, Deut.
13:1-5 warns them of some prophet or a dreamer of dreams who gives them some sign or wonder and then leads them after other gods. The people of Israel were to be people of the
Book.
This happened in many places around the world in the age of missions. The stories I
heard were mostly from South America and Ukraine, where pastors of what we
could call “Bible Churches” (in Ukraine they were Baptist Churches) were lured
by money (of which they had very little) and notoriety (ditto, they had little)
to bring their churches along and join what could be called the “religion of
experience” (sometimes called the “signs and wonders movement”). Books were often written about “winds of fire”
and so forth, books that sold well in the dead churches of the west, who would
empty their pockets in order to fund these growing churches.
But as is the case of the “religion of
experience,” it is a religion that is never satisfied. The amazing works have to continue, and to
even gain in wonder. And once the
appetite of God’s people is no longer satisfied with the Bread of the Word, it
is then in a hopeless situation. People
become followers of men, move from group to group, and are starving
spiritually.
If this was a “Wikipedia” article it would
have one of those notations telling us it needs better footnotes. I have been wandering in my memory a
bit. But the wandering was prompted by
Deut. 13:1-5. It’s interesting that the
Church today has the same problems Israel had in OT times. There is no end of the various and strange
doctrines that can carry us away from the Word of God and our Lord (Heb.
13:9). Deuteronomy was that Book that was
to be Israel’s foundation. We, the Body
of Christ, can be encouraged and warned about this. May we be faithful.
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